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Editorial
GOP Outdoes Itself
With Open Hypocrisy
Perhaps the one overwhelming, defining
characteristic of the current, “modern” Republican Party is blatant, ‘in your
face’ hypocrisy.
Rush Limbaugh, who not too long
ago proudly proclaimed himself the real head of today’s GOP, long condemned drug
use in the most emphatic terms, calling for draconian punishment, then didn’t
even blink or retract one word when he was caught buying Oxycontin and other
drugs illegally and using them in great volume. When he emerged from a fancy
treatment center he went right back on the air and declared that with his very
presence the “truth” was once more being broadcast in America.
There have been many other examples of GOP
chutzpah since Limbaugh’s drug use was exposed, but now another top Republican,
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered a particularly mind numbing
example of cynical hypocrisy.
When discussing the upcoming
Senate vote on Pres. Barack Obama’s choice of Elena Kagan as a replacement for
retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Sen. McConnell declared that
the GOP would make certain of a “thorough process, not a rush to judgment” in
vetting the nominee.
This was by itself transparent
political hypocrisy, since the Senate, including Sen. McConnell, thoroughly
vetted Ms. Kagan in the spring of 2009 when she was chosen by Pres. Obama as the
Solicitor General of America
But the best was yet to come.
"Judges must not be a rubber stamp
for any administration. Judges must not walk into court with a preconceived idea
of who should win," Mitch McConnell declared, going on to assert that
Republicans would assure a rigorous debate based on that principle.
The straight-faced hypocrisy is
almost too much to bear.
The Republicans have succeeded in
seating four members on the Supreme Court that approach every case with a clear,
right-wing ideological slant.
Justices John Roberts, Samuel
Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia are reliable, arch-conservatives who
“walk into court” consistently as activists willing to press the law toward
their right-wing philosophy. They are often joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy,
but he is not as reliable an ideologue as the famous four, which must be a
frustration to Sen. McConnell and his Republican colleagues.
Apparently the only prospective
justices who need a thorough vetting by the GOP are those who do not hold a
right-wing philosophy.
May 2010
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